Monthly Archives: January 2012

I’m “Crushin’ ” on these Strawberries and Cream Cupcakes big time. Last weekend I wanted to create my own strawberries and cream cupcake from my base scratch cupcake recipe. Needless to say I ended up throwing that batch out. Today I went back to the test kitchen and did a few things differently.

Here in South Florida it’s Strawberry Season for us until the end of February. What better time for strawberry season than right before Valentines Day. Perfect reason to try these.

When I tried these last weekend I baked the strawberries inside. I pureed them in a blender with some heavy whipping cream and it made the cupcakes too sweet.

Looks pretty but didn’t taste so great. The strawberries disintergrated inside the cupcake when baked and they came out purple! How I wish I’d taken a photograph of that, but I was embarrassed to show anyone.

This time I decided to just add the strawberries so as not to change the properties too much and keep a moisture in the cupcake.

I initially didn’t want to look at other recipes online, but I needed something besides strawberry extract to kick it up a notch and give it a more natural taste. I ran across a video on Youtube on Betty Crocker that used strawberry soda. I thought that was genius and would lighten up some of the sweetness in my cupcake. I may try it again with Nestle Quick strawberry milk next time just to see if it changes much. You could probably also use a strawberry gelatin. Sure, now as I’m writing this I come up with all the others.

12-16 large strawberries washed dried and hulled and sliced in small bowl

FROSTING INGREDIENTS:

6 tablespoons crisco shortening

3 tablespoons salted butter room temperature

3-4 cups confectioners sugar

4 tablespoons strawberry ice cream syrup

2 tablespoons strawberry soda

1½ tablespoon strawberry ice cream syrup

Instructions

CUPCAKE INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

line 12 cupcake liners in muffin/cupcake pan

cream butter and sugar on medium speed with stand mixer or hand mixer

add dry ingredients to butter and sugar mixture

add wet ingredients to mixture

mix until all lumps are out

use ice cream scoop and fill liner ⅔ full

place in oven and bake until toothpick come out clean or they spring back to touch

cool

CUPCAKE FILLING:

while cupcakes are cooling cut strawberries into small pieces and add strawberry ice cream syrup. Mix well with spoon set aside

when cupcakes have cooled core them out and add a teaspoon of strawberry filling

replace top of cupcake (don't worry if not neat, it gets covered with frosting)

FROSTING:

cream together shortening, butter, and syrup

add confectioners sugar

add strawberry soda

mix well on low speed and gradually increase speed until all lumps are out

2.2.1

The real test was giving them to my boyfriend to try. I asked him to honestly rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, obviously 10 being AWESOME! He gave them an honest (hopefully) 7/10. I’ll take it! I’m constantly trying to make my cupcakes taste better that is the fun of baking right? So I’m sure I’ll be trying to improve upon that number.